Apples!

The first weekend in October became Apple Overload for us! Ben's Parent's have 2 tree that were out of control this year! So I loaded up all of my canning bottles that I inherited from my mom and we went up to can. I had no idea it was such an intensive process, but the Harper's have been doing this for years.

First you have to get the Apples out of the trees. This can happen several ways. 1- you can hand pick them which is the best way to get pretty apples, but very time consuming. 2- You can climb up into the tree and try to shake them down.

3- You can throw a rope with a brick tied to one end over the tree branch and then shake with all your might. This method results in a downpour of apples which all end up getting bruised. Oh well, bruised apples are okay when making apple sauce!

My job for the day mainly consisted of picking up all of those apples and loading them into this bin. I swear I filled that thing up several times.
Grace (ignore the hair, she's lucky she got dressed that day) spent most of the day playing and holding the new bunny.

After the Apples were washed they were taken in bucket loads out to be peeled, skinned, and cored. Whoever invented this machine should be blessed!

Then into the bottles they go! I think we ended up doing around 180 bottles that day!

We were all exhausted by the time we were done, but enjoying the fruits of our labor is very sweet! (in the form of Apple Crisp, Apple Pies, Apple Sauce and Apple Butter!) I took 2 boxes of Apples home with me and made 24 jars of Apple Butter. Yummy!